This is an ABC podcast.

What would you think if a friend told you this?

He's punched me in the face and broken my teeth.

Oh my goodness.

The incident where he punched me in the face,

he just stood there and stared at me like the lights were on,

but nobody was home.

There was a vacant look on his face.

Just zero remorse. It's a loaded term, but colloquially, you might refer to a person who

do this and fail to feel any remorse as a psychopath. People with psychopathy, and we'll talk

about exactly what that means, make up about

1% of the adult population. But here's the thing, it can only be diagnosed in adults. It's not

a childhood diagnosis. How old was he when he broke your teeth? Oh, that was before he was in

hospital, so he would have been about seven, seven or eight.

Oh my goodness. So despite the rather extreme behavior, he broke a after-school care worker's finger.

He's dislocated his father's shoulder. Nicole's son wouldn't be considered a psychopath.

Brains are constantly developing. So you can't look at a kid and say this person is definitely

going to be a psychopath. You're listening to All In the Mind. I'm Sonic Hedar.

So kids aren't labeled psychopaths for a variety of good reasons. But there are a set of

behaviors that emerge in childhood

that can be precursors to adult psychopathy. They're called callous unemotional traits,

and often they're accompanied with aggression. Once the other side kicks in, you're scared

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